JEANS & GENES

Rockdale County Genealogical Society Publication

November, 2012

Ancestry.Com To Be Sold

Genealogy website Ancestry.com — which filed for an IPO back in 2009
– has agreed to be acquired by an investor group led by European private
equity firm Permira in a cash deal worth $1.6 billion, or $32 per
share. Ancestry.com described the buyout as a “definitive merger agreement”.

Press Release:
Ancestry.com (Nasdaq:ACOM), the global leader in online family history,
and Permira, the European private equity firm with global reach, today
announced that a company owned by the Permira funds and co-investors
has entered into a definitive merger agreement to acquire Ancestry.com
for $32.00 per share in cash in a transaction valued at $1.6 billion.
Tim Sullivan, Ancestry.com’s President and Chief Executive Officer,
and Howard Hochhauser, Ancestry.com’s Chief Financial Officer and
Chief Operating Officer, will maintain a majority of their equity
stakes in the company as part of the transaction. Spectrum Equity
will also remain an investor in the company

Ancestry.Com Sued

Ancestry.com Inc. (ACOM), the world’s largest family-history website,
was sued by a shareholder who contends investors will be shortchanged
in a proposed $1.6 billion buyout by Permira Advisers LLP.
Permira, a London-based private-equity firm, agreed to pay $32 a share
for Ancestry.com, the companies said Oct. 22. That’s 41 percent higher
than Ancestry.com’s closing price on June 5, the last day of trading
before Bloomberg reported that the company had hired a financial adviser
for a possible sale.

“The consideration shareholders will receive is inadequate” and they
“are being unfairly cashed-out” given the company’s recent performance,
investor John Heck said in a complaint filed in Delaware Chancery
Court in Wilmington and made public today.

Ed: This seems inevitable: but, what does this do for the subscriber
to the service?

Some Internet Search Ideas

Start by entering the name of your ancestor. If you get too many search
results, try putting double quotes around the name. This tells the
search engine to look for the exact name in the exact order that you
specify. “John Smith”

Many genealogy records are listed in the order of <last name, first
name>. Therefore, when looking for John Smith you should also look
for “Smith John”

The (*) or wildcard is used when you are uncertain about the spelling
of a name or place. For example, the last name Smith can have many
different spelling variations (Smith, Smyth, Smythe, etc.). You use
the asterisk as a placeholder for these unknown spellings, as shown
below:

“John Sm*th*”

One thing to note about using (*) is that it can be used as a placeholder
for several letters at once. Therefore, a search for
“john smith*”
would produce results for names like John Smithwright, etc.

The (*) can also be used to substitute for entire words, such as a
middle name. Looking for

“john * smith”

would produce John Smith records where a middle name or a middle initial
is present.

What Is On-Line By Ken Thomas

"It's all on the Internet" is a frequently-heard phrase, yet experienced
researchers know that is not true. So just what original Georgia (or
for that matter any state's) research sources, or reliable abstracts,
can be found online? Check first with the State Archives, in this
case the Virtual Vault portion which includes marriage and land records,
death certificates to 1930, colonial wills, and tax digests from 13
counties, at www.GeorgiaArchives.org . Some items are on the Georgia
Archives site as well as on Ancestry.com including Georgia's Civil
War Pensions, and some death certificate data. Ancestry has the index
to Georgia death certificates (1919-1998), more tax digests, the 1867
Voter Registration List, published marriage data, the Joe Brown Census
(1864), Savannah Vital Records, city directories, some newspapers,
Troup County court records, as well as Georgians in the World War
I Draft Cards and U. S. Passports. On Familysearch.org you can search
by each state to see what has been digitized, and for Georgia you
will see a variety of records, most recently the addition of loose
estate papers from selected counties. The University of Georgia's
Galileo and related sites include Georgia newspapers, the "Georgia
Statistical Registers" where you find biographical sketches of state
officials and legislators, early UGA press publications related to
Georgia history, Georgia laws, and the New Georgia Encyclopedia. On
the USGENWEB site, each county in the country has a website and many
Georgia ones contain abstracted materials. By searching the card catalog
at the Georgia Archives site (above) or on WorldCat you can determine
what books have been published on a given county, and learn some of
the nearest libraries that have them. Many county histories include
abstracts of original records, as well as separate publications. The
Fold3 site includes Revolutionary War pensions in full, as well as
newspapers, city directories, and the Southern Claims Commission materials.
On Google books you can find many Georgia books of abstracts available
as well as the "Georgia Reports" that include abstracts of Supreme
Court cases starting in 1846. But all in all, while a lot is on the
Internet for Georgia, we are still a long way from it all being there,
hence the need to know how to do research in the Georgia Archives,
the county courthouse, or the many good genealogy library collections
in the state.

Ken Thomas On Family Search

FamilySearch.org has recently added to their ever-expanding website
Georgia marriage records up to about 1900 and have them fully indexed
so that you can search for a couple's marriage, by full name or just
two surnames, statewide within the Georgia records in case you don't
know where they married. This is a very valuable new source. Drawbacks
are that they do not include the actual book and page, for that check
the county courthouse, the microfilm at the Georgia Archives, or the
Archives' Virtual Vault online to view the original digitized certificates.
Also on FamilySearch.org no distinction is made whether the couple
is white or African-American, here again, check the original source.
The site also includes digitized original probate office record books,
such as recorded wills, minute books, bond books, as well as many
loose estate files, from most Georgia counties, and is being updated
often. This makes an incredible body of source material accessible
to researchers at home.

Archives Sign-In Requirements
The recent situations about hours open at the Georgia Archives and
the National Archives at Atlanta have shown that it is most important
that patrons sign in when using a facility and that if management
is going to use those statistics to verify usage of materials, that
they make sure people sign in. We often take "sign-in books" as a
hassle, but we should always sign in so that statistics stay high.

Ed: It seems that this requirement is mandatory. There has never
been a time when one could enter without signing the time sheet.
In light of the budget question, this seems more important.

Statement from Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp on Public Closure
of the State Archives Effective November 1, 2012

The Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget has instructed the Office
of the Secretary of State to further reduce its budget for AFY13 and
FY14 by 3% ($732,626). As it has been for the past two years, these
cuts do not eliminate excess in the agency, but require the agency
to further reduce services to the citizens of Georgia. As an agency
that returns over three times what is appropriated back to the general
fund, budget cuts present very challenging decisions. We have tried
to protect the services that the agency provides in support of putting
people to work, starting small businesses, and providing public safety.

To meet the required cuts, it is with great remorse that I have to
announce, effective November 1, 2012, the Georgia State Archives located
in Morrow, GA will be closed to the public. The decision to reduce
public access to the historical records of this state was not arrived
at without great consternation. To my knowledge, Georgia will be the
only state in the country that will not have a central location in
which the public can visit to research and review the historical records
of their government and state. The staff that currently works to catalog,
restore, and provide reference to the state of Georgia’s permanent
historical records will be reduced. The employees that will be let
go through this process are assets to the state of Georgia and will
be missed. After November 1st, the public will only be allowed to
access the building by appointment; however, the number of appointments
could be limited based on the schedule of the remaining employees.

Since FY08, the Office of the Secretary of State has been requiredto absorb many budget reductions, often above the minimum, while beingresponsible for more work. I believe that transparency and open accessto records are necessary for the public to educate themselves on theissues of our government. I will fight during this legislative sessionto have this cut restored so the people will have a place to meet,research, and review the historical records of Georgia.

Archive Budget Restored In Part

Press release received Thursday, 18 October by email at 2:44 PM:

Gov. Nathan Deal and Secretary of State Brian Kemp announced today
that the state will restore $125,000 to Kemp’s budget to keep the
Georgia State Archives open to Georgians for the remainder of the
budget year.

Gov. Deal Announces Archive Transfer

Deal also announced he will ask state lawmakers to transfer oversight
of the Archives from the secretary of state’s office to the University
System of Georgia. The Legislature will meet next starting in January.

“We should be very grateful and appreciative of the governor about
what he has been able to do,” said Dianne Cannestra, president of
the Friends of Georgia Archives and History. “We are very excited
about the move to the university system.”

The extra funding allows the Archives to stay open to the public through
June 30. If lawmakers approve, control of the Archives would transfer
to the university system July 1, the start of the new fiscal year.

Deal said the transfer would include state funding needed to keep
the Archives open and care for its vast collections, which include
important and historical state records dating to at least 1733. The
university system would then help staff the Archives, Deal said.

Dick Eastman's Newsletter

Try Dick Eastman’s newsletter for many good ideas for genealogy research.
Dick is a well-known genealogist whose newsletter appears on both
twitter and facebook. A Google search will get you onto his web site."Ye Old" Explained

Many of us have encountered the word “ye” in old documents. Of course,
we have all seen tourists shops labeled as “ye olde” something-or-other.
How many of us know how to pronounce that?

For years, I assumed it was pronounced as it was written. I would
pronounce it as “Yee Old.” I was a bit surprised later to learn that
I had been wrong.

What looks like a “y” is a written character deriving from the old
English letter, “thorn,” representing the “th” sound. No, it is not
the letter “y,” it is the letter thorn. The thorn was commonly used
in written English in the Middle Ages and for some time after. That
explains why we see it on old documents and even in modern written
sentences that imitate historical writing. Other than these cases,
the thorn has now almost disappeared.

JEANS &
GENES is a publication of the Rockdale County GenealogicalSociety.%
Nancy Guinn Library864 Green St. SWConyers, Ga.
30012